First of all, thank you for making a game that makes me willing to write a stupid long forum post. It says a lot about how much fun I’m having playing it. I would like to suggest that we should have a separate area to build building templates and expand some features in it. My reasons follow:
With the new workbenches coming into the game, my town building strategy has started to change. I’ll just lay out how I approach starting my town.
- Promote trapper and carpenter
- Start clearing trees
- Workbench for carpenter – queue maintain 1 of every tool.
- Queue carpenter to maintain 3 of every common building item and furniture I use.
- Designate storage (must fix containers so I can use this instead!)
- Farms
- Outline first roads but do not start build
- Build Inn – large building with 8 beds and 8 places to eat
After I have directed the people to build the Inn for my town, I figure out what I want to do next. I’m finding that I now have started building for each profession – I want to put the loom and the wheel inside the weaver’s house, I want to build the mason’s house out of stone, and I’d like to be able to pre-designate storage for the plants/wood/stone as needed nearby the workbench to be used. However, this takes a lot of steps to set up, and I’d rather go crazy making detailed templates that I can use in my games later.
However, there are a few things that I don’t think we can do right now
- We can’t specify the settings for a storage item before we start
building. - We can’t set a zone inside or next to a building. (In my last town
the silkweed farm was in the Weaver’s backyard) - We can’t preconfigure a pasture with a wooden fence around it.
- You can template a building, but you can’t template the path to the
front door. (in my towns, front doors must be at least 3 squares
from the main road.)
I would like to be able to create templates outside of the running game and pre-configure all of the detailed settings like zones, containers and workbenches. I would like access to all the possible items so that I can make a template for the wealthy mayor’s home/office which only uses the superior versions of every item, or items that will take some time to get access to. I think it might give me a reason to grow flowers, make window boxes, or even plant one of those saplings in the front yard.
I would also like to be able to set up the dimensions I would build on. For example, ask for a 10x10 square area for templating a poyo pasture, 10x20 for creating the inn and 20x20 for the entire setup of my food crops I needed. Being able to isolate the area without the rest of the world in the way would help with the creative process, and I think some people would enjoy just making designs outside of the main game. With the right strategy I can Tetris my templates together as I outline my city.
What would you like to be able to use or put in a template?